Daily Comment on News and Issues of Interest to Michigan Lawyers

02/25/2013

Bork's Posthumous Nixon Revelation

Forty years on one might think that there would not be any juicy revelations left about the big events of Watergate history. And one might be wrong. According to the Associated Press, Robert Bork's posthumous memoir, Saving Justice, to be released March 12, says that President Richard Nixon promised then-Solicitor General Bork the next available Supreme Court seat the night
Bork executed the President's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Previously that day, October 20, 1973, Attorney General Eliot Richardson and deputy William
Ruckelshaus had resigned rather than carry out the order. The value of the Presidential promise was questionable:

Bork writes that he didn't know if Nixon
actually, though mistakenly, believed he still had the political clout
to get someone confirmed to the Supreme Court or was just trying to
secure Bork's continued loyalty as his administration crumbled in the
Watergate scandal.

Bork's failed Supreme Court nomination by Ronald Reagan in 1987 has come to define Bork's place in history, but his role in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre comes in a strong second. Bork writes that the sequence of resignations and firings that Saturday would more appropriately have been called the "Saturday Night Involuntary Manslaughter," because Nixon blundered through the day's events.

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Bork's Posthumous Nixon Revelation

Forty years on one might think that there would not be any juicy revelations left about the big events of Watergate history. And one might be wrong. According to the Associated Press, Robert Bork's posthumous memoir, Saving Justice, to be released March 12, says that President Richard Nixon promised then-Solicitor General Bork the next available Supreme Court seat the night
Bork executed the President's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Previously that day, October 20, 1973, Attorney General Eliot Richardson and deputy William
Ruckelshaus had resigned rather than carry out the order. The value of the Presidential promise was questionable:

Bork writes that he didn't know if Nixon
actually, though mistakenly, believed he still had the political clout
to get someone confirmed to the Supreme Court or was just trying to
secure Bork's continued loyalty as his administration crumbled in the
Watergate scandal.

Bork's failed Supreme Court nomination by Ronald Reagan in 1987 has come to define Bork's place in history, but his role in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre comes in a strong second. Bork writes that the sequence of resignations and firings that Saturday would more appropriately have been called the "Saturday Night Involuntary Manslaughter," because Nixon blundered through the day's events.